Speaking of publication, I just got a list of undergrad journals I've been told to consider submitting to, so I've been thinking about that. No word back from my school's lit journal, I can expect a response by January I think. I'm just about done with the final project for my workshop class--we're supposed to make a chapbook using poems we've written this semester, about half of which have been workshopped. It's actually kind of fun, if a little time consuming.

Hahah...that youtube link is so true. That's pretty much all the stock answers.

- Sorry but we cannot use your work at this time.- The editors enjoyed your work but it's not quite suited to our theme. - We reject many excellent manuscripts due to space constraints. - Thank you for allowing us to consider your work but it's not the right fit for our publication. ...and so on....

More kicks, please. I'm having a really busy week, but I should definitely get started on those shorter papers that come with deadlines. Just so they're out of the way, and I can concentrate on the big project again (that I have fallen utterly in love with).

I agree that every word counts, KT. Two short stories is amazing progress for one day!

I'm supposed to be working on a 24 page short story I wrote back in the summer this month and was once very excited about but it needs TONS of editing but instead today, I polished off my two poems I wrote Monday and resurrected a short three page (600 word) short story I wrote in October 2011 and had given up on but I reworked it and wrote a new second half for it with what I think is a good ending and now I think I'm pretty happy with it and I'mma sit on it a few days and decide if I want to send it out for consideration.

Kicks for you, phoenix! I'm not taking it easy so NEITHER SHOULD YOU. And as you work on your big project, hopefully you'll fall more and more in love with it as time goes on and even though it may break your heart a few times in the process stick with it because it'll be worth it! <3

So the 600 word short story still doesn't work when I read it this morning and neither does one of the poems. With the short story, what goes before doesn't justify its ending in the final analysis and the one poem that doesn't work is a decent beginning but it's disjointed and doesn't really come together. I think it needs more stuff added to it and then it will work but I can't think of what right now. But, that said, the good news is one of the poems works well and I'm pleased with it so out of three pieces worked on this week, one is good to go...except now I need to write more poems because I can't really send one around (depending on where you send, they usually like to see anywhere between three and ten poems--unless it's a long/epic poem in which case one would do--but this is not an epic poem, it's just a one-pager). Anyway, of course I wish all three pieces worked but I need to be happy to know that I can take away at least one usable piece from this week's work.

Tomorrow, I need to make some headway on that 24 page short story that's promising but is in a shambles right now. I know the beginning and ending and I'm pretty well married to them both but it's all the stuff in between that needs to be worked out. Gah!!!!

This morning I typed up the editing changes to my 24 page story and it's whittled down to 15 pages. Needs tons of work, it's so disheartening. But the premise is good. I know the beginning and end and it's hard to imagine those changing (though I have to stay open to it the whole way through because murdering your darlings sometimes really is essential for stuff to work. I'm like a serial killer when it comes to murdering my writing's darlings). It's rough to know I have to do something with this very skeletal manuscript and try and make it shine because it's just dull as dishwater and nothing's doing right now. Argh! It's gonna be tough. But there are some little things in there worth pursuing and I just have to expand on those and tease out the best of it and build it from there.

Some inspiration for today for my fellow writing friends:

Risa Bramon Garcia wrote:

You’re about the work first, knowing that career will follow and not the other way around. Dedicated work leads to good work. Good work leads to great work. Great work is thrilling. Great work is noticed. Celebrated. Hired. And money follows bliss. As Steven Pressfield wrote in “The War of Art,” “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

I'm taking a writing vacay and have been for the last week or so and taking it generally easy in December as I always do, and I can feel the burnout that hit me at the end of November being replaced by a desire to be creative again. It's like if I could have described my mind at the end of November, it was like an excavated shell with burnt edges and now that cored husk has renewed itself there are some new little tadpoles of idears swimming around in there, ready to grow again. Time away is good sometimes. I plan to officially hop back on my regular writing schedule on Monday, January 7. Who knows, I might get a couple of hours in here and there between now and then but only if I REALLY want to. Whether or not I WANT to, pen goes to paper again come January 7 and I'm back to the disciplined, writerly grind I typically demand of myself.

Okay, so yesterday I seriously tackled small writing project #1 to have at least one of three out of the way by next week. I realized that right now I can only write in spurts. After not quite two hours of rewriting bits and looking up references I was thoroughly exhausted and had to go read some unrelated nonfiction to rest my brain. But then at night I kept going back to insert phrases I'd just thought of, and to check my sources. In the end I made a batch of PB chocolate pillows since my BF was craving cookies and there weren't any.To be continued... The rewriting bit (and extending the length of a paper and strengthening an argument) is hard work - but I'm convinced the result will be even better than what I started with (and I liked that already, if I may say so).

I think the main reason I stick mostly to poetry and rather short fiction is that rewriting long work terrifies me. I mean, it's rewarding to work hard on a piece of writing in revision, but it certainly is hard work, and daunting. But you're definitely right; the work you're doing now is going to make your paper stronger, more insightful and just more excellent in general. Keep at it!

Yeah, long work terrifies me too but I also know it'll just take a lot of the same concentrated effort that I apply to short pieces sequentially. I'm most afraid of putting in a ton of work on something novel-length and then it ends up that there's something just fundamentally wrong with it that straightforward editing/revising can't fix and it would take a re-conceptualization and complete reworking of the idea.

I wrote a new 15 page short story (speculative fictionish) over January 2&3 that came to me as I was working at my job and it came as a complete idea from start to finish (like I knew the beginning, ending, set up, scenario and the main character right away) and those are really the best kind of ideas in my experience--the ones that come already pretty well fully formed and all the pieces seem to already fit. Those kind of complete ideas that are already pretty well developed before they hit the page are super rare in my experience but I want to write this one quickly and the ones that come like this usually can be written quickest of all because I won't get stuck struggling with the ending.

Two or three hours is about my max, too, phoenix before I need to take a break from writing. It seriously taxes the brain! Really, more like two hours before I hit burnout and need a break, but sometimes I'll push through to three straight if I'm really absorbed by something. I usually work for an hour or two, take a break then try and work another two hours if the schedule of the rest of my day permits...

I'm working on a story today...and was yesterday, too. I probably shouldn't, it's the weekend and I don't usually write then, but I really want to finish this one so I can get back to sifting through my novel manuscript and get on the rewriting of that. Also, I was having some minor problems working out the beginning and end of my story (what else is new, and despite what I said a couple of posts earlier about how easily this one came to me and how it's all figured out--it ain't) but I figured out a way I think to tie the beginning and end together like I think I want to while sweeping my apartment this morning. I can even feel a different part of my brain working when I'm working out story kinks as opposed to technical details/editing because stylin' stuff comes more naturally to me because of all the years of poetry-writing but working out plotting details and figuring out those kind of broader problems in stories are trickier for me because I'm not so practiced at it--working out a story can be like solving a puzzle and you just gotta hope you hit the right combination to solve it. Poems are like solving a puzzle too, just much more concentrated and usually working with a much smaller idea, provided you're not writing some sort of epic poem. Anyhoo, back to typing up edits. I'll be skeltonizing the story now and have to bulk it up again tomorrow. That's how I do: skeletonize/bulk/skeletonize/bulk however many times until I'm somewhat satisfied or until whatever deadline is reached, whichever comes first.